As any ecommerce customer knows, product reviews are a critical part of the online buying experience. Analytic tools give you a unique opportunity to learn about customer psychology and implement solutions for addressing their needs.

Reviews aren’t capable of driving sales on their own – they need to be understood through analysis. Analytics turn reviews into tools for conversion optimization. You can use reviews to generate conversions, ramp up product reviews, and sell more products.

The intersection between analytics and conversion optimization is important because of how usage data can lead to better decision-making. For instance, a website with a high bounce rate may be poorly designed or addressing the wrong audience.

This is a situation that calls for optimizing the store’s conversion strategy. Product reviews are an ideal place to start.

Get Good Product Reviews

In the world of ecommerce, few messages are more powerful than an excellent product review. Almost every e-commerce platform includes some sort of reviewing mechanism – whether in the form of a one-to-five star rating or via lengthy, descriptive, and often entertaining comments.

The greater task of conversion optimization relies, in part, on racking up excellent product reviews. This is because having large numbers of good reviews establishes a sense of legitimacy that is almost impossible to generate otherwise. As eConsultancy.com points out, user reviews increase conversions.

• Having more than 50 reviews per product can lead to a 4.6% conversion rate increase.

• Customers are 63% more likely to buy products from websites that offer user reviews.

Reviews can drive conversions – but how can ecommerce store owners increase the number of reviews their products generate? In short, by asking for them.

Get Bad Reviews Too

30% of online consumers assume that product reviews are fake if no negative reviews are shown, according to Vendasta. When creating a strategy for online reviews, ecommerce store owners need not be afraid of the criticism that an unfavorable review entails.

Unless the review is so scathing that it absolutely needs to be censored, including it is usually a good idea. Leaving the occasional negative review in with a mostly-positive set of responses is a good way to give the process a sense of authority and trustworthiness.

Importantly, brands need to respond to negative reviews quickly and decisively. More often than not, an unfavorable review is one of the best chances for a brand to gain a new, loyal follower and publicly promote itself in a positive way.

Doing this successfully requires solving the customer’s problem and demonstrating that the business is committed to continuously improving itself.

Test Post-Purchase Copy to Get More Reviews

Knowing that reviews help customers make purchase decisions and that having only good reviews is undesirable, e-commerce store owners have good reason to get as many reviews as possible. With luck, the percentage of good reviews to bad ones will be in the upper 90s, showing that, overall, people are happy with the products or services they receive.

One of the first ways e-commerce store owners increase review responses is through better handling of their post-purchase copywriting. Most customers are generally willing to sign up for email newsletters or other tertiary services after they’ve made a purchase with a specific brand. Asking for a review can be one of the most valuable post-purchase actions a customer can make.

Successful post-purchase copy asks for a review without seeming insincere. Generating a sense of authenticity will produce the greatest benefits at this stage in the conversion cycle.

The following strategies tend to produce results.

• Offering return customers a discount code for leaving reviews can help incentivize the process.

• Some online retailers reach out to customers on social media. Any social media user who tags the brand or mentions it is likely to respond favorably.

• Follow-up emails work when they are targeted and narrowly focused. Run A/B comparisons to get an idea of what types of email marketing campaigns work. Digital receipts, for instance, enjoy a 65% open rate and a 10.7% click rate.

Reviews Offer SEO Benefits

On a concluding note, product reviews carry significant SEO benefits. Each review consists of unique, often keyword-heavy content useful for search engines, which can increase ranking. One of the most useful keywords that reviews help boost is “[product name] + review”, which is a top-performing search term for most products.